Virtual Product Placement
In movies and television there is an idea known as “product placement.” In addition to hitting you with advertisements your favorite characters in movies and TV are drinking coca-cola and eating McDonalds, not to mention using a Macintosh computer.
The result, the advertisers hope, is that you too will use these products. Not just because your favorite actor is using it, but because it is an everyday object – something that you see all the time and therefore become conditioned to think of as “normal.” If, for example, you see everyone on TV using Macs you might assume that in the real world a huge number of people are using them too. This might then, in turn, get you to want and perhaps buy a Mac.
This same strategy is also used in Virtual Worlds. Second Life and There.com , for example, are huge pervasive worlds that also have a lot of real-world products in them. Avatars can wear K-Swiss shoes, for example. In this way, it has the same effect as it does in movies and on TV – while walking around these worlds you see people wearing those K-Swiss shoes. You might then later see that same shoe in a real-world store and decide that you want it. It looked cool in the virtual world, so why not this one? Or perhaps your avatar uses that shoe and you want it so that you can match your avatar. Whatever the reason, you find you want it.
Recently There.com has signed deals with 4 new retailers. What is making these entries interesting is that they are not building giant islands or areas devoted to their products. Rather they are making these products available for avatars to buy or get through other means in the virtual world in general. No need to go to K-Swiss Island – they are not going to have one. Instead, you can go to a shop on There.com and get the shoes.
The buying experience will feel more real as a result. This form of advertising may prove to me much more successful, as a result, than devoting an entire island to Coca-Cola (as Coke in fact did on There.com). This, then, is much closer to what is already being done in movies and on TV.
Others have also tried this in the past and I feel this is a better route to take. After all, a McDonald’s themed world or portion of a world doesn’t interest me in the slightest. However, integrate everything into the existing virtual world, rather than creating a whole new area or world, seems smarter and makes the experience feel more realistic. Realism, odd as it may seem to some, is what people are going for in places like Second Life and There.com.
Note: This is written by me and originally posted at the Rising Tide blog.
